And so farewell, Dave Whelan; definitely not a racist.

So Dave Whelan has stood down as chairman of Wigan Athletic. Big deal. But look at what he has done for Wigan, they have been saying on BBC Radio 5 Live. Well, what has he done?

His great achievement has been to buy success. Wigan is a rugby town, not a football town. It’s a League One sized club, at best. We’ll soon see when they arrive in League Two the year after if they actually belong a league lower still. Even now, gates are down to 10,000. Whelan put a lot of money in to make the club bigger than it seemed, spending money it didn’t have and spending some of his own instead. When Wigan beat Manchester City in the FA Cup final, much was made of David and Goliath nature of the clubs but the David in that fairytale was not a multimillionaire. They beat a team paid for by oil giants from the middle east. Two sides of the same coin, two unsustainable football clubs run on the basis of cash injected by a third party.

Whelan did build a stadium, which was firstly named after his clothing stores and then, modestly, after himself. It’s almost always more than half empty unless the rugby team has a big match.

That Whelan has put Wigan on the football map is undeniable but remember also he donates huge sums to David Cameron’s Conservative Party and only a fool would not be aware of the damage Cameron has done to the town of Wigan since he went into Downing Street in 2010. Anything Whelan has given the town has been more than taken away by decisions made by his politician pals.

Oh, and Whelan is a racist. Well, when I say he is racist, the FA has said he most definitely isn’t. It’s just that he made some racist remarks about Jewish people and about Chinese people. So, apologies for saying you are a racist, Mr Whelan. I just got a bit confused when you indulged in a bit of casual racism. Happy to be corrected there.

He still owns Wigan of course and the difference will be minimal since he spends most of his time in Trinidad these days. I expect he will crawl out of the woodwork again sometime in the future, probably if Wigan have won something.

Goodbye, Dave, and good riddance.